The Herald, 22/08/2009
It’s one for the money
Ron Mackenna

Hot? Not this evening. It’s a bit bloody chilly out here. A damp August breeze running through us as cars flash by on Dumbarton Road and we shift uncomfortably on aluminium chairs sloping with the pavement. But hot as in fashionable? Yes siree. Call it a buzz, a murmur, a feel, but Velvet Elvis has definitely got something going on. People sprawl from the open frontage, chatting, eating, drinking and creating a burst of colour and noise that prompts the occasional driver to slow down and rubberneck the action.

Inside, beyond tiles retained from the premises’ past life as a butcher’s shop, past dangling meat hooks, over the heads of the girls-night-out crowd, there’s a jumble of bodies, a jukebox, a warm golden glow and one of those come-on-in atmospheres that make people fortunes.

Another new restaurant in the west end of Glasgow? Punters drinking and eating like it’s a golden age? What bloody recession? At least Velvet Elvis, with its menu stuck on old album covers and cheery waiter who calls everyone “guys”, is far enough away from the corporate top end of trendy Byres Road. Yes, I know I’m the only person who thinks Byres Road has been on the slide since the closure of the Grosvener Cafe.

Anyway. Put it this way: it’s so funky that we’re happy just to get a seat tonight, and happier still to recognise familiar faces in the crowd. There’s tabloid photo guru Ronnie Anderson at the door shouting to me: “You’re doing too many Edinburgh restaurants!” And there’s Kathleen Morgan, who until recently edited this magazine and is soon to embark on a career as an English teacher, sitting at the big table. It seems this is the place to be.

What’s it all about, though? Well, you will have heard of Pintxo, the tapas restaurant next door. It’s highly rated by everybody. Except me. Frankly I thought it was just a sliver above the ordinary, yet another of those west end joints that inexplicably get monster reviews. Full marks for the visuals, though – it looks delicious from the outside, as does Velvet Elvis. Owned by the same man, you see. Different food, better space, better lighting, but definitely same owner.

The food? The food tonight is a bit funky, folks. Fish and chips are on the menu, of course, alongside hand-made burgers. There’s even a little blurb saying all the cows used in the meal were hand-knitted and all the fish came from species nobody wanted to eat until now. Or something like that.

Our stuff? Cal’s eating a competent red pepper soup with bags of flavour and a slightly sour but not unpleasant aftertaste. I’ve got the Stornoway black pudding with a lightly poached egg. Make that under-poached, actually, as the yolk runs a watery mile when it goes under the knife. As for the Stornoway black pudding, there’s no explanation of which butcher’s it comes from, so we ask. “Um, ah, oh,” the waiter replies before admitting he doesn’t have a scoobie. Full marks for charm, anyway.

As for the main courses, we dodge the steak frites and decide against what looks like confit’d duck leg. Instead it’s the burger with bacon from a genuine Gloucester Old Spot pig and a dish of ox tail and champit mash. To be fair it’s pretty good: rich, dark, tender meat, an almost black mushroom and red wine jus and a sizeable dollop of mash. The burger is fine. No complaints, though that hand-reared Old Spot might have died in vain given the impact the bacon has on the overall taste.

My point, then, is that this is a cool restaurant or bar, or both. The atmosphere is fab, the customers are enjoying themselves and it is undeniably right on the money. So what if the food is nothing spectacular. Sometimes that doesn’t really matter.

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